Jails shouldn’t detain people without charge

Someone’s encounter with local police sends up a red flag in the computers of the federal Immigration and Custom Enforcement agency. So agency officials contact local law enforcement and request that the flagged person be detained for up to an additional 48 hours so the agency can double check the person’s immigration status.

Local sheriffs comply with the request because:

• No. 1: That’s what law enforcement agencies do for each another.

• No. 2: They don’t want to be responsible for releasing someone who poses a danger to local public safety.

• No. 3: They think they have to because it’s a request from the feds.

• No. 4: All of the above.

But think about it for a few more seconds, and it becomes clear that such ICE “detainers” violate the protections put into place by the U.S. Constitution. After all, nobody — even foreign-born residents — should be held in jail for an extended period without approval of a court.

After all, people don’t need to have committed a major crime to be taken into police custody. Instead, those red flags could come up from traffic violations or other such minor offenses — charges that may be dropped while the person is detained.

And many of the people detained wind up having all their immigration paperwork in order and thus have done absolutely nothing worthy of being detained. Yet they still have lost a few days of their lives — taking up space in crowded local jails and costing the local governments, not ICE, the money it takes to house them.

After an April court ruling in Oregon made it clear that No. 3 above simply was not true, we were pleased last month to learn that Polk County Sheriff Bill McCarthy had informed federal authorities his county no longer would be honoring ICE detention requests without an order from a judge. Doing so, the Oregon case demonstrated, could open the county up to civil suits from the people so wrongly detained.

But we were downright thrilled earlier this week to learn that McCarthy’s announcement seems to be just the tip of the iceberg. The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa reports that at least 22 Iowa counties have stopped holding foreign-born inmates at the federal government’s request unless a judge approves the move. And that number may grow as more counties get around to responding to ACLU Iowa’s request for information.

We’re especially glad to see Johnson County on this list.

“That was something that we automatically contacted the county attorney’s office, and ultimately, they gave us some advice and said that they thought it was best that we discontinued honoring that detainer, so we made that decision,” Johnson County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek told the Press-Citizen.

Immigrant advocates rightly argue that the fear of being detained by local authorities often keeps undocumented immigrants from calling 911 in emergencies, such as domestic abuse situations. (Not to mention that taxpayer money is wasted by jailing immigrants who have not been found in violation of federal law.)

We’re not sure about the full local ramifications of the county’s decision not to honor ICE detainer requests without a judge’s approval. Pulkrabek also said that communication between the county and federal agencies will continue and that county would provide information about when individuals of interest to ICE officials are released from the county jail.

“If (ICE officials) want someone, they just have to change how they go about doing business,” Pulkrabek said.

But such a gray zone is an improvement over the policy of automatically turning county jails into holding cells for people who aren’t facing any charges.

Eventually, we’d like to see all 99 counties agree to stop honoring the ICE detainers. But having 22 sheriffs start to say “no” to the feds is definitely a step in the right direction.

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